Esquire.com’s Style Section Gets a Makeover
Not long after Michael Sebastian took over as Esquire’s site director in May, he and his team had a “series of existential conversations about Esquire.”
“Style was the area that kept coming up where we thought, ‘We do a lot of good stuff but it’s not as high profile as some of the stuff we do around politics and entertainment,'” Sebastian recounted last week. “We determined that we needed to do a 15 percent pivot from what we were already doing.”
As a result of those conversations, Esquire.com is revamping its style page in an effort to make the section more prominent. The section, which relaunches Monday, will emphasize original photography, celebrity-style features, long-form trend pieces and market stories. Launch sponsor Seiko will do a one-week takeover of the Style landing page.
“We want to give it a point of view so that when people land on the Esquire style page, they know where they are. I think you can say that about the politics and culture pages, but I’m not sure we have actually had that with the style section,” he said.
Like many media companies, Hearst is ramping up its push into e-commerce affiliate links, meaning that the publisher gets a small percentage on purchases a reader makes after clicking onto an e-commerce platform linked to by the media outlet. As part of that push, Esquire.com will run a service-y weekly column, revived from the print archives, called “Esquire Endorsement” where an editor will recommend a product or tip.
The idea is to build on Esquire.com’s success with affiliate links. According to Sebastian, Esquire.com came in among the top Hearst brands when it comes to e-commerce strategy.
“That was like, holy s–t! Our guy will actually buy stuff from us,” Sebastian said.
Read more:
Esquire Names Michael Sebastian Site Director
Hearst Men’s Group Digital Editor Michael Mraz Moves to New Role
Buzzfeed Editor Tapped to Lead Esquire’s Web Site
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